DAY 6- May 23: Free Day!

It’s Saturday morning in Africa. Wow. That just sounds cool. So like normal, I woke up around 7 am. Got ready for the day and went those 5 steps to the breakfast room. Same breakfast except today, Selby brought the Myers Brigg Personality Inventory for us to look at. Basically, we were all screaming out our personality codes and reading about ourselves. “ENTJ!” “ISFP!” “Yah, you’re heartless because you’re a ENTJ!” Jokes like that were being thrown around ALL DAY. So that was a kind of fun.

After breakfast I really had nothing to do, since today was a completely free day! So I did a little blogging, skyping, and working on my reflection paper on first impressions due on Monday morning.

After the morning class got out, we all decided we would go to lunch. We took the Matatu (taxi van). We decided to split up between people who wanted Indian food and true Ugandan food. So OBVIOUSLY I chose Ugandan since.. I’m in Uganda! So Tom took the first group and then came back for us. The ride over to town was fun, just because Tom makes me laugh because he is constantly laughing at how silly/stupid I am. It’s great. Plus he does this thing where he drags out the word, like “oooooookkkkay.” He’s just great. He knows a lot, plus he just spent the year at college in Michigan, so he knows the American culture very well.. and accepts us for who we are. We decided he must be the most popular guy in his school! When I asked him, he just smiled and looked down! HA. He said… “yyyaaahhh, they call me Tom from Africa.” Love it.

So he took us to this local place where he just ordered a little of everything for us. The fish and chicken came in a soup like broth. Then there were like 10 different sides including: Matoke, yams, sweet potato, this root thing, Irish potatos, rice, and some other stuff I can’t remember right now… It was um.. interesting. Some of it was very starchy. But overall I’m glad I tried it all! The fish was great! And the rice and Irish potatoes were SO GOOD… but I guess that sums up who I am.. as in my favorite foods were the ones I have like everyday. But it’s all good. Its all about the experiences. He also taught us a card game they play in Uganda (it was basically crazy 8s except the 7 of the first suit laid out at the beginning of the game ends the game).

After lunch, he took us back to the Gately. We were going to go bungee jumping! Well I wasn’t going to go (I draw the line at sky diving.. and we all know I’ve done that.. “the Brittany Chin-Lee Show”), but I wanted to watch. HOWEVER. Some how Bayli and I got left! But it’s okay. We got over it. We decided to go into town.

On our way out, one of the ladies that works at the Gately, Grace, was going into town too, so we walked with her. So that was nice. She is so sweet. We decided to first stop by The Source and say hi to Kuwaiti! We saw a ton of American students (probably on a mission trip). Then we started walking around and ended up at Indulge this really cute café like place. I got a plate of hummus and pita with veggies. The hummus was brown and kinda tasted like peanut butter, but it was pretty good. It got better as I ate it. Also the women there all spoke pretty good English.. Bay was wearing our “if the halo fits” shirt and the women taking our order just stopped and read that out loud. Then we showed them the back of the shirt “wear it” and they totally got a kick out of it! They were laughing and smiling and telling the other women to look at it! I love it.

After we finished, we walked around some more… we gave some guys in a car directions to good places to eat?! What? Yah. Us. We’ve been here for 2 days. But it’s all good. We did our best to help! We walked around and looked in a few stores. I was looking at the leather bracelets with little beads on them to buy for my friends. They either have a pretty pattern or say “UGANDA” or “AFRICA.” BUT that’s when I stumbled upon ONLY ONE bracelet that said “OBAMA” with 2 American flags (one of the flags is the opposite direction of a normal flag).. so obvi I had to buy the bracelet. (We all know who I want to give it to, but we all know he won’t wear it.) But yah.. Obama is like a God here.

We headed home. And guess who we saw!? One of the boys from yesterday.. STILL wearing the lime green slap bracelet that was more like a shade of brown. We stopped him to say hi and check to make sure it still worked! And it did! It was so cool to see that he was still wearing it a day later! Thanks again Mer!

Finally, we got home, gave the group a hard time for leaving us, and learn to play the game “Crazy Pitch” with Dr. Perrin. That killed the time before dinner. Fish masala, rice, noodles and no teachers! Ha. Funny conversation when the adults leave. But I’ll just leave it at that. Then we had a little par-tay in our room. Well actually we didn’t mean to, but all of a sudden there were 10 people in our room, listening to music, talking about Brian’s love life, and just bonding. It was great. Then we finally migrated over to common room to play a little taboo! (It wasn’t my night tonight.. I didn’t do that well but it was fun. Then WARM shower! And blogging! Yes! Completing this means I’m caught up! YES. Peace out friends... Church tomorrow! This should be fun!